The Archive

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Tom Laskowski, who shares the following recording and notes:

Last night I took advantage of a clear Saturday night to head out to my favorite "dark sky" astronomy site south of Bourbon, Indiana to do some stargazing. I took my 5" telescope along with my favorite "accessory", my newly cleaned, aligned and recapped RF-2200. While waiting for sunset and darkness I recorded one hour of The Mighty KBC's Giant Jukebox and followed that up with a recording of three hours of Toronto's CFZM "Zoomer Radio and their weekly program Saturday Night Bandstand. While not SWBC, listening to Zoomer is a great way to spend a Saturday night under the stars. There is some fading and a strange growling noise which I believe was caused by having my digital recorder too close to the radio. Also some thunderstorm static can be heard from storms which popped up near the end of the recording. Both recordings were made with either the RF-2200's whip antenna for KBC or the internal ferrite swivel antenna for CFZM. Enjoy!

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Sarah Boucher, who shares the following recording (believed to be an FM off-air recording) and notes:

Recorded by John Bruno, Richard Astbury was the last announcer to speak from Floriana, followed by the Evening Hymn and Last Post, an instrumental version of L-Innu Malti and a church choir sings God Save The Queen, accompanied by a Church Organ and a Military Band. The final program was the Eurovision Song Contest 1979, won by the host nation Israel. The studios of BFBS Malta are still around as of 2018 as for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. This occurred on the final Saturday of March in the seventies because of the withdrawal of British troops ordered by President Anton Buttigieg.

Many thanks to Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Colin Anderton, who shares a series of off-air recordings, originally made on reel-to-reel tape, of Radio Moscow in the late 1970s. This is the final recording in this collection--recorded exactly 40 years ago today. Colin notes:

As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights.

In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days' news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them. I have some other flights as well.

I received them all on 227 metres Medium Wave at 22.00 hrs GMT each night. I was in a village called Stetchworth, near Newmarket, Suffolk, England at the time.

In fact, an announcer gives the general daily broadcast details on this first recording.

I used a similar system with all the files, that is: where any edit takes place, I have placed a one-second break to identify the spot. No other editing of any kind has been done.

Many thanks to Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Colin Anderton, who shares a series of off-air recordings, originally made on reel-to-reel tape, of Radio Moscow in the late 1970s. This is the twenty first recording in this collection--recorded exactly 40 years ago today. Colin notes:

As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights.

In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days' news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them. I have some other flights as well.

I received them all on 227 metres Medium Wave at 22.00 hrs GMT each night. I was in a village called Stetchworth, near Newmarket, Suffolk, England at the time.

In fact, an announcer gives the general daily broadcast details on this first recording.

I used a similar system with all the files, that is: where any edit takes place, I have placed a one-second break to identify the spot. No other editing of any kind has been done.

Many thanks to Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Colin Anderton, who shares a series of off-air recordings, originally made on reel-to-reel tape, of Radio Moscow in the late 1970s. This is the twentieth recording in this collection--recorded exactly 40 years ago today. Colin notes:

As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights.

In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days' news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them. I have some other flights as well.

I received them all on 227 metres Medium Wave at 22.00 hrs GMT each night. I was in a village called Stetchworth, near Newmarket, Suffolk, England at the time.

In fact, an announcer gives the general daily broadcast details on this first recording.

I used a similar system with all the files, that is: where any edit takes place, I have placed a one-second break to identify the spot. No other editing of any kind has been done.

Many thanks to Shortwave Radio Audio Archive contributor, Colin Anderton, who shares a series of off-air recordings, originally made on reel-to-reel tape, of Radio Moscow in the late 1970s. This is the nineteenth recording in this collection--recorded exactly 40 years ago today. Colin notes:

As a space flight nut, I have many recordings from the 1970s from Radio Moscow. They used to broadcast on the medium wave, and I used to record the news bulletins during some of the space flights.

In particular, there was a period between December 1977 and March 1978 when Soviet cosmonauts first lived aboard the Salyut 6 space station. I recorded each days' news reports on the flights, and also some additional items about them. I have some other flights as well.

I received them all on 227 metres Medium Wave at 22.00 hrs GMT each night. I was in a village called Stetchworth, near Newmarket, Suffolk, England at the time.

In fact, an announcer gives the general daily broadcast details on this first recording.

I used a similar system with all the files, that is: where any edit takes place, I have placed a one-second break to identify the spot. No other editing of any kind has been done.

910 kHz – “Eight Days a Week” from the Beatles. I don’t know where this is coming from, but it might be bumper music for a talk radio show like Coast to Coast (They often let the bumper music play for a minute or two) or a full playing of the song on a music radio station. Some crosstalk from a talk station in the mix on this reception.

900 kHz – CHML in Hamilton, Ontario. I know this Canadian news and talk station for playing old time radio shows overnight. Kind of odd to me that they’re covering the hearings of an American judge. Followed by some news about Prince Harry.

880 kHz – It’s WCBS in New York, a powerful clear channel news outlet heard across the country. Here you get a dramatic report on four separate shootings in New York City, the kind of news you don’t hear so much these days. I let this play for a few minutes.

860 kHz – Very poor reception of CJBC, a French CBC outlet in Toronto. I’ve heard a wide variety of great music on this station over the years. I almost always would get a good copy on this station from my former home in North Brooklyn, but then again late night AM reception does vary.

820 kHz – WNYC-AM in New York, the sole NPR outlet on the AM dial in the city. Overnight they carry the BBC World Service, which is what you hear in this scan.

770 kHz – Trump apologetics from “Red Eye Radio” on WABC in New York. While this syndicated program has roots in Bill Mack’s great country music program, now it’s just one more conservative talk show. But it’s the exception to the rule as most live overnight talk radio programs don’t stray into political opinion like this, unlike during the day when it’s everywhere.

750 kHz – WSB in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a strong signal up the east coast. Here I find them in a commercial break which leads into a snippet of a rebroadcast of the Johnny Kielbasa Final Fast Food Review of 2017. Then the much beloved Meg calls in.

740 kHz – CFZM, or “Zoomer Radio” in Toronto, Ontario. It’s a quirky format, and often the only dependable music radio station for listeners in the eastern middle of North America. Here we’re treated to Jim Croce and some holiday fare.

710 kHz – WOR in New York. It’s former WABC talk host Mark Simone enthusiastically selling “My Pillow.” AM radio can be so comforting late at night, but the IBOC surrounding this frequency not so much.

700 kHz – You can almost hear WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio trying to cut through the IBOC from WOR, but it’s a mess. I guess it’s a sacrifice so all those dozens of HD radio listeners can enjoy WOR in all its digital glory.

660 kHz – WFAN in New York. Sports radio heaven I guess.

640 kHz – Some old-fashioned vocal belting in Spanish. Not sure what this is. Perhaps WWJZ in Mount Holly, New Jersey.

620 kHz – WSNR in Jersey City booming in. Here you get one the epic and much-played recordings of Alexander Scourby reading from the King James Version. What a voice – warm, authoritative and dramatic. I have to admit he sounds dated, but in a good way. His recitation of the Bible is still popular almost seventy years after it was recorded.

610 kHz – Difficult to read signal of a talk radio show. Male host. I’m guessing this is sports talk WTEL in Philadelphia.

600 kHz – Another hard to hear transmission of a talk show with a male host, and it seems to be another sports discussion.

570 kHz – A cheesy Infomercial on WMCA. Once a great top 40 station, WMCA was also where the “Father of Talk Radio” Barry Gray got his start back in the nineteen-forties. Nowadays it’s a New York City Christian outlet owned by Salem Media, which apparently pays some bills by playing tightly edited testimonials praising the miracles of consuming fruit and vegetable pills. I never hear programming like this promoting a diet of real fruits and vegetables.

560 kHz – More Christian broadcasting from another former legendary top 40 station, WFIL in Philadelphia. They’re also owned by Salem. Some more traditional preaching, and not a great signal arriving here in Brooklyn.

From there, I stop by a couple very weak signals up to the top of the dial, and that’s it.

There were a number of radio stations I almost always hear late at nights that were absent or very faint in this scan, like WHAS in Louisville, WAY in Schenectady, WJR in Detroit and WHKW in Cleveland come to mind. And on a good night (especially if the IBOC on an adjacent station isn’t active), if I can null out a booming local next door I can receive WSM in Nashville, or KMOX in St. Louis and even occasionally pick up WLS in Chicago sneaking over the edge of booming clear channel WCBS at 880.

I hope some shortwave listeners find something of interest in this medium wave excursion. Thomas runs a fantastic blog, and I’m proud to be a little part of it today.

Part 1: Late Night Pre-Christmas Medium Wave Scan, NYC 2017

I haven’t recorded a proper scan of the AM dial in New York City for a while, so I took a shot at it a week before Christmas, starting around three A.M. Monday morning, December 18.

I asked Thomas if his readers might be interested in the audio from an AM scan here and some annotations, kind of like I used to do on my Radio Kitchen blog not so long ago. When I scan the dial I often start at the top of the AM dial and work my way up, but sometime it’s fun to do it the other way around and begin with more low power small stations where the fare is a little more exotic than the typical talk and news formats you hear from regional and powerful clear channel transmitters up the dial.

I have a number of radios that would really be better candidates to do this sort of thing, but since I’m kind of between places right now and most of my radios are in a storage unit somewhere, I’m using the Tecsun PL-880 I have with me. And typically I’d do this with a loop antenna up next to the radio, but they’re in storage too. So it’s just the stock ferrite antenna inside the radio doing all the work here. There’s some of the typical urban RF noise in the mix, but it’s not all that bad. Then there’s the awful splatter of digital IBOC to plow through. Not fun to listen to, and some stations you might otherwise find are masked by hash.

If you don’t listen to AM this late at night (or this early in the morning), it’s really not a great time to hear live programming. A lot of talk shows from daylight hours are rerun at this time, and the few music stations you might find are often running music automation with no live DJs. But a few talk local talk shows in big cities are live, and syndicated ones like Coast to Coast or Red Eye Radio are broadcast live overnight on quite a number of stations.

Instead of trying to do a lot of DX digging and pull in the really hard to hear stuff, I’m not equipped for that right now so I just plow through looking for what I can find without too much trouble. As I said, I didn’t have another antenna to assist me, but I duly rotated the radio and adjusted the bandwidth when appropriate. If you’re keeping score at home I do at least pause on every viable MW frequency, even if there’s nothing there.

I wouldn’t say it’s a typical late night New York medium overview of the band, as a few common finds on the dial were missing, and didn’t find many of the smaller Canadian locals I’ve heard on other nights. The one difference is that for years I’ve been listening from my former home in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For now I’m down in Bay Ridge, at the bottom southwest corner of Brooklyn, and a few things are different. Like the very first station I come across.

1710 kHz – This scan begins with an oddity, WQFG689 a “traveler’s information station” broadcasting just a notch above the x-band, but a spot on the dial that is still included on contemporary AM radios. According to Wikipedia it’s the only legit station in America broadcasting on 1710. It’s owned by Hudson County in New Jersey broadcasting on a handful of ten watt transmitters. I’m assuming this reception might be coming from Jersey City, which is across the water not far from here. A few years ago one of the Hasidic communities in Brooklyn had a lo-fi pirate station at this frequency, but I haven’t heard it there in a long time. And as WQFG689 sits in a very lonely place on the dial, this station is a popular DX target. Apparently at this hour they were experiencing “technical difficulties.”

1690 kHz – Some contemporary R&B style pop song with a male singer. It’s an English language performance however (is it Spanish?). I’m not sure what this might be, but from looking around on the web it may be CHTO, a multicultural station in Toronto, Ontario.

1650 kHz – A weak reception of a talk radio show. Some discussion of the desires of Harvey Weinstein and other matters. Perhaps this is WHKT in Portsmouth, Virginia.

1630 kHz – At this spot on the dial I receive an image of WINS (1010kHz) as well as some station broadcasting the unavoidable Brother Stair. Don’t know exactly what is going on there, but the PL-880 is known to toss in some stray images on the dial in dense radio markets like New York.

1600 kHz – Some spirted South Asian pop music. Bollywood stuff I suppose. This would be WWRL here in New York, broadcasting from Secaucus, New Jersey.

1570 kHz – I believe this is the Eagles singing about Christmas. I have no idea what station this might be. WFLR in Dundee, New York is a guess.

1560 kHz – A little bit of Bible from Family Radio – still on New York City radio, but not on the FM dial anymore. Otherwise known as WFME here in New York. Armed with fifty-thousand watts, their signal has quite a reach. I hear the ghost of Harold Camping on here from time to time.

1530 kHz – Speaking of ghosts, it’s Ol’ Brother Stair buying some time on WJDM in Elizabeth, New Jersey I believe. Is he in prison yet?

1520 kHz – Sports talk from WWKB in Buffalo, New York.

1500 kHz – A discussion of Christmas treats on WTOP in Washington, D.C.

1480 kHz – Some seasonal mischief in Chinese from WZRC, a Cantonese station here in New York.

1460 kHz – Some distant choral or Christmas music from somewhere.

1430 kHz – Casual talk of God’s happiness plan from WNSW in Newark, New Jersey. Not to judge, but Catholic talk radio is just more civilized than most Protestant talk radio. A little more breezy than the fire and brimstone stuff. They always sound like their shirts are ironed. Carrying the Catholic radio network “Relevant Radio” is the latest format at this frequency in the city. Before that the “Voice of Russia” was broadcast here.

1380 kHz – More Chinese talk. This time it’s from another multicultural station – WKDM here in New York City.

1350 kHz – A poor reception of late night talk. I believe it’s “Red Eye Radio.” I really don’t know where this is coming from.

1310 kHz – A female host on a talk radio program. Mediocre reception from another unknown AM station.

1300 kHz – Again, a female conversation here as well, but this time the topic is spectator sports of some kind. I’m thinking this is the ESPN affiliate WAVZ in New Haven, Connecticut.

1280 kHz – A medical case study in Spanish and English from WADO, here in New York. This is a Spanish news/talk station owned by Univision.

1250 kHz – It’s WMTR in Morristown, New Jersey, which is essentially the only true oldies station that reaches New York City. During the day it’s not a rock solid signal in New York, but anybody who knows how to fiddle with a decent AM radio can pick it up. At night, I had a hard time getting a good read on WMTR when I lived up at the top of Brooklyn, but down here in Bay Ridge at the South Brooklyn waterfront it’s pretty solid as you can hear. Starting with “Da Doo Ron Ron” and “Sugar, Sugar” I let it roll for a few minutes. Not many radio stations play a “classic oldies” format these days, or if they do it might just be the torture of a super tight 300 song playlist. While WMTR can’t top the huge music library of WLNG out at the end of Long Island, they rotate a respectable mix of the old hits. There’s a rather interesting Wikipedia entry for WMTR, where you can read about their experimentations with AM Stereo and how they’ve tweaked their oldies rotation over the last few years, partly in response to WCBS-FM in New York moving away from oldies into a morass of format noodling.

1210 kHz – WHPT in Philadelphia playing the conspiracy/paranormal Coast to Coast program, the most popular syndicated overnight radio show in North America. It’s George Knapp hosting, but during the week it’s George Noory. The original host and creator of the program, Art Bell is long gone after quitting radio about five times. After one A.M. or so, moving across the AM dial means you’ll come across Coast to Coast many times. Tonight the topic is Area 51, which is hardly surprising.

1190 kHz – Some contemporary R&B flavored Christian music from WLIB. in New York. Always clear reception for this station. This station was actually the original flagship station for “Air America,” the short-lived progressive talk network. For those of you who may remember WOWO, the Midwest clear channel 50,000 watt station heard far and wide at 1190 from Fort Wayne, WLIB’s powerful 30,000 watt upgrade is directly related to that Indiana station’s demise as a nighttime powerhouse. Back in 1994 the owners of WLIB actually bought WOWO for the specific purpose of cutting back their signal after dark (It’s now only 9,300 watts and directional) so WLIB’s could be increased up to what it is today. Sneaky, eh?

1180 kHz – Coast to Coast again, this time coming from in WHAM, in Rochester, New York. Great call letters.

1170 kHz – Coast to Coast coming from WRVA in Wheeling, West Virginia this time.

1130 kHz – WBBR in New York, otherwise known as “Bloomberg Radio.” I may find it kinda tedious, but if you’re a big time profiteer this might be your favorite radio station. Just listen to the commercials, sheesh! And as a bonus you get a public service announcement about how high-tone Manhattanites should prepare for disaster.

1110 kHz – A strong read of Coast to Coast from WBT in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1100 kHz – It’s WTAM in Cleveland, Ohio broadcasting Coast to Coast. Not as strong as the signal from Ohio.

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Scott Nelson, who submits the following recording and notes:

WRNO - Shortwave from New Orleans. "The Rock of the World". Recorded in Minot, North Dakota with a Sony ICF-6500W receiver to a cassette tape. Transferred from cassette to mp3 format using Audacity software. This recording contains many IDs, ads, rock music, business news.

Many thanks to SRAA contributor, Ray Robinson, who shares this mediumwave recording of a station ID and notes:

"This was my first ever transatlantic DX catch of a North American station, while I was living in England. I was so excited! The radio bug truly bit me, and I have been an avid radio enthusiast ever since!"

Broadcaster: CKCM, Grand Falls, Newfoundland

Date of recording: 10/1/1976

Starting time: 0156 UTC (2326 local Newfoundland time)

Frequency: 620 kHz

Received in Luton, England, using a Russian Vega 206, medium wave loop

The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive

The Shortwave Radio Audio Archive (SRAA) is a collection of shortwave radio recordings that you can download or listen to as a podcast. The collection grows every day and includes both historic recordings and current recordings from the shortwave radio spectrum.

The goal of this site is for shortwave radio enthusiast to have a place to store, archive and share their radio recordings with the world.

You can subscribe to the archive with any podcasting application by subscribing to our RSS feed. Simply right click and copy this RSS feed url, then paste it into your podcasting application's subscribe box.